Percheron Electronics, which is spear-headed by Neil Matthews (who regularly attends and helps at our Cambridge Raspberry Jams), has just launched its first Kickstarter.

The campaign seeks to raise funds to produce an e-paper HAT for the Raspberry Pi. The display is a 2.7″ screen with a resolution of 264×176 pixels. The HAT also comes with a built-in real-time clock which helps the Pi keep in time and opens the way for projects such as clocks and weather stations. The software that comes with it is a low-level C driver that interfaces to some Python demo programs which enable you to get something up-and-running very quickly. Above all else, it is great for projects where power usage is important – the display only draws significant power when it is redrawing an image.

The Super Early Bird pledges have already gone (the HAT has drawn significant interest already) but the Early Bird is still available at £36 plus delivery, rising to £39 when they’ve gone. This is extremely good value for an e-paper display – the existing solutions out there tend to sell the driver board and display separately and can be a bit clunky with cables all over the place. Creating it as a HAT tidies all that up into a very neat package.

Neil’s a great guy and I wish him all the best with the campaign!

Back the Kickstarter project here. Watch the campaign video below: